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Or, at a fraction of the cost, I can just go off my meds, start drinking again and let the delusional good times roll... But all snark aside, if the family's last line of defence is a man who has a long track record of being either pig ignorant or a pathological liar, it's beyond help.

He tells the story of his two-year-old son running into the road, being knocked down and ending up in hospital – but how, far from learning his lesson, he ran out into the road again, forcing Sigman to give him "a whack on his backside, accompanied by a good shaking". Did it work?

Let me get this right... the child got HIT BY A CAR and was not persuaded through that (fairly substantial) physical force to stop running across the road, but a whack on the backside did the job. What did he hit him on the bum with, a bus?!

Why do I keep hearing a shrill cry of "teach 'em to read, and they're going to get ideas above their station -- mark my words! Mass literacy is going to be the end of civilization!" They more things change and all that...

Seeing as disrespectful derision is somewhat frowned on when it comes to the magical thinking of our fellow beings. Lets just start at the beginning and reveal the sordid beginnings of monotheistic patriarchy.

The Adam and Eve story was an ancient monotheistic (or maybe henotheistic) satire/warning off of goddess worship. "Eve" was one of the names of the goddess Asherah, who was the wife of the high god of the polytheistic Israelites. Asherah (like some other ancient goddesses) was associated with fertility, a sacred fruit tree and snakes, and was often portrayed in the nude in art.

So the Adam and Eve story is saying that, because the first man listened to the goddess and not to the god, he was punished. And by making Eve his wife, punishing her and making her mortal, the satirist degraded her from divine status. Over the centuries, the original divine nature of Eve was forgotten. Then Christians re-interpreted the whole satire into a tale of how Satan, not the goddess (in the form of the talking snake), corrupted humanity.

The Adam and Eve story has absolutely nothing to do with Original Sin or the Eternal Damnation of humanity. Rather, it's how those early desert would-be philosophers claim humanity lost immortality and was punished for worshiping/heeding anyone other than the highest god of ancient Israel.

In regard to Judy Bailey's star turn at the Family First conference - the work she is doing for the Brainwave Trust seems to be linked to Simon Rowley's research on the effects of stress on young children. Basically he's a paedeatrician (sp?) who has found that levels of cortisol (iirc) increase significantly in the brains of children under stress, and this has negative impacts of brain development. The hook for Family First is that some people have then gone on to equate being in an early childhood centre with stress for young children, although stress is actually low in quality centres, particularly with low child:adult ratios, qualified staff and a low turn over of staff (which allows children to build permanent relationships and thus minimise stress and attachment issues).

Family First's line is that mothers should stay home with their children until they go to school, and they claim that the research around stress in ECE settings backs them up. Judy Bailey did a big cover story in the NZ version of the Australian Women's Weekly about this sometime last year I think. What she actually has to say, and my understanding of Rowley's research, is not as black and white as Family First would probably like, but that won't stop them using it to legitimise their "traditional family values" agenda, which is really more about undermining women.

Now you mention it, the story in this week's by Maggie Hamilton, based on her book What's Happening To Our Boys, is fairly high on the hysteria factor.

Like all these things, it touches on reasonable concerns. But to suggest that what boys are "really" doing online is viewing incest, distributing child porn and having sex with virtual prostitutes in Second Life is verging on the insane.

"Don't tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers: the Herald on Sunday is read by people who think they run the country; The Sunday Star Times is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The NZ Herald is read by people who actually do run the country; the Listener is read by the wives of the people who run the country; the NBR is read by people who own the country; Scoop is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country; and The Dom Post is read by people who think it is."

"Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Truth?"

"Truth readers don't care who runs the country, as long as she's got big tits."

Oh, and Tuhoe Isaac's book is worth a read if you're interested in getting a glimpse of the details of the inner workings of NZ gangs and gang psychology.

Clearly someone for whom a conversion to christianity was the lifeline they needed to pull themselves out of a death spiral and avoid self-destructing in a manner that would have taken down not only themsleves but probably many others.

Yes, CR. but the Christian Right has been like this about every form of media technology conceivable- from film censorship (1930s -1970s) to video/CD/DVD censorship (1980s- Present) to Internet censorship (1990s- ). Sigman is part of a long trend.

Ah, Bob McCoskrie...a Man-Bartlett for a new century. Shame it's the nineteenth...

In regard to Judy Bailey's star turn at the Family First conference - the work she is doing for the Brainwave Trust seems to be linked to Simon Rowley's research on the effects of stress on young children.

Is this the stress of wondering where their next dose of "parental correction" is coming from?